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| Ryan, Mike, and I inside the Colosseum |
I started out my vacation within a vacation in Italy, which as I expected, was so so so amazing! After a not so graceful, Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality-style fall right when I stepped off the airplane and onto Italian soil, our trip went off with very few additional missteps. I was travelling with Ryan and Mike, two other boys from UM in my program, and we spent 6 nights in Happy Days Hostel, with a solid five days to explore the city. Our hostel was pretty hilarious, and basically the kind of hostel you always hear stories about... We had no room keys, lockers without locks, and always had to get buzzed up (it was on the fifth floor of a random building, just a couple blocks from the Vatican). We were given a sheet and comforter (with no duvet cover) and the pillow was tucked under the sheet since they didn't have enough pillowcases! Oh, and the power (including hot water) was out one morning, lol. Regardless, we had a really fun time there, and were always woken up to hot Italian coffee (basically an espresso shot that you mix a heaping spoonful of sugar into), the workers gave great recommendations for food, transport, and nightlife, and to top it all off, one of the workers made us all pasta for dinner the last night!
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My best picture of the Pope riding around
on his chariot through the masses |
While in Rome, we tried to hit up all of the touristy must-sees, including the Vatican museums, where
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My amazing snipe of the Sistine Chapel...
("No pictures allowed!") |
the Sistine Chapel is located, the Colosseum, Roman Forum, Trevi Fountain, and the Mouth of Truth. A happy and pretty special coincidence was that we arrived the day before Easter and were able to see the new Pope give Mass in St. Peter's Square on Easter Sunday. There were sooo many people and Catholics from all over the world migrated to the Vatican for Easter. We woke up at 5:30 and went to stand in line along the Vatican walls until they started letting everyone in at 8:00, before waiting until Mass started at 10:15. We were pretty exhausted after the flight and then staying up wandering around the city, but it really was a once in a lifetime experience! All of the other sites were really amazing-- we decided to take a guided tour of the Forum and Colosseum, which was definitely a good choice since we got to hear a ton of stories and history by our Irish tour guide, and without the tour, we would have been looking at rocks with hardly any background info. I really liked going inside the Colosseum, and it honestly felt like I was walking into the original Big House, combined with the Hunger Games... Two of my favorite things! We didn't buy into the "Skip the line!" tours of the Vatican Museums, and while we saved money without doing the tour, we certainly paid for it by having to stand in line for over three hours, in the pouring rain and sometimes hail. On the plus side, the vendors all had a happy day selling their 5 euro umbrellas!
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| At the top of the Bell Tower in Florence |
Since we did have a decent amount of time in Rome, it would have been a crime to not do a little more exploring throughout Italy, so on our fourth day there, we hopped on the express train to Florence! Firenze was a perfect day-trip and really nice city to walk around. We got to see Michelangelo's famous David, but I would love to go back and visit the other art museums there sometime since we didn't have time for them that day slash the boys aren't quite as into art as I am... I maintained my steady diet of two gelato-a-day naturally, since the gelato there was AMAZING! Real Italian food may have just been my favorite part of Italy, and seriously puts Olive Garden and Bravo to shame... I could live on the pasta, gelato, and wine alone and would be a very happy (and overweight) girl.
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